The Jewish Press mourns the death of Dr. Marvin Schick, a prodigious intellect, a talmid chacham, and one of the more creative and effective personalities on the Jewish educational and communal scene for more than five decades.
A gifted writer, he was a longtime contributor to The Jewish Press, and his very popular column “In The City ” – a literary gem – was a goldmine of information about the dynamics of New York City’s political, religious, and Jewish organizational life.
In the mid-1960s, Dr. Schick was one of the few who recognized the need for Orthodox Jewry to establish its own presence in public affairs separate and apart from that of the general Jewish community so that it could advocate for yeshiva and day school education and the right of Jews to practice their religion – issues not then at the top of organized Jewry’s agenda.
He was proud of his work with all organizations to advance these goals and was one of the founders of COLPA (National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs), which was dedicated to them.
He was perhaps most proud of his 40-year stewardship of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School and rebuilding that testament to authentic old-world Torah Yiddishkeit to its current preeminence.
One of the marks of his greatness was the joy he took in his close relationship with and total subservience to the Lakewood Rosh Yeshiva, the great Gaon Rav Aharon Kotler, zt”l, by whom he was entrusted with many significant assignments over the years.
Yehei Zichro Boruch.
(For more on this unique personality, please see the tribute by Nathan Lewin – a close colleague of Dr. Schick – on page 57.)